The Wow of missions in the Philippines 17 July 2009
Monday, 27 July 2009
17/07/2009
For someone who is a night person I found it really tough to wake up at 6am in the morning. We had to wake up early and get ready to move out by 7.45am.
I was kind of glad when Dr Chong called later that Pastor Mike would be picking us up at 8.45am instead of 7.45am. That gave me another one more hour of sleep.
9am
We arrived at the main campus ll Bajumpandan of Negros Oriental State University. This is the department of Air Science and Tactics. The campus consists mainly of a large 3 storey building facing a large open field.
Negros Oriental State UniversityNegros Oriental State University
The GLCC and SMCI teams fanned out and went into different classes to share the gospel.
I took some video clips of the team in action before settling down to find out more about SMCI from Pastor Mike at 11am.
Team members of SMCI and GLCCSeeking permission to share the Gospel from the University
Sharing the Gospel to students at level 2 open area
Ven sharing the Gospel to students under a tree
Students listening to the GospelStudents listening to the Gospel
Pastor Mike told me that SMCI started in 1998 after a young Filipino named Joy Pinero who was working in Singapore got burdened to reach her own people. She started an outreach to students in various universities and won over many young people to the Lord after she returned to the Philippines.
Pastor Mike with Joy Pinero
Pastor Mike was invited to join this mission work in 2000. The team led by Pastor Mike was able to preach the gospel in every classroom in 5 different universities and high schools when they first started. They preached the gospel 170 times to over 14,000 students and thousands of students made professions of their faith for Jesus within a short span of 8 weeks.
A young student named Ven Tabunda heard the gospel message and was gloriously saved during one of these meetings. He took the gospel to his family and they were saved as well. Today his father pastors a church in this part of Philippines and Ven is now the national director of Student Movement for Christ International (SMCI).
Ven Tabunda
Ven sharing the Gospel with some students
SMCI grew from its beginnings on the island of Negros to the large city of Cebu, then to Bohol, Leyte and then to the city of Davao on Mindanao.
Today SMCI has a staff strength of 45 workers and they have weekly bible studies in over 55 university and college campuses in the southern part of Philippines.
We left the school at 1pm to head back to SMCI to have a time of corporate prayer. We prayed earnestly for God to continue to open the Gospel door for us. Some of the team members were in tears as we prayed passionately for this gospel outreach.
Group prayersMelody praying earnestly
The GLCC team continued to fold more Gospel tracts. I noticed that some of them were busy making correction for a typo error on the Gospel tract. The local printer had made a typo error and printed “giving our sins” instead of “forgiving our sins” on the Gospel tract. The printer missed out ‘for’ in the word ‘forgiving’. Wow, this is really hardwork. They had to make the corrections on thousands of gospel tracts. I have bad handwritings and decided not to make things worse.
Pastor Mike wanted me to do a video interview of Pastor Michelle, Mike and Daphne after lunch. These are young people in their twenties who have dedicated their lives for this gospel outreach through SMCI.
We decided to head back to our hotel to conduct the interview. Conducting a video interview is definitely much easier with the help of Derrick who used to work for Mediacorp. He helped to film the interview from another angle while I closed in on the person being interviewed.
Pastor Mike & MarkPastor Mike and Michelle
Pastor Mike and Daphne
We were all excited and looking forward to the Gospel rally at 5pm. I was told to expect around 5000 students in the evening.
5pm
We gathered at the entrance of the Negro Oriental High School which is facing a busy street. There were many students in this campus. We waited while the local SMCI staff worker went to seek permission from the administrator for us to use the campus facilities for evangelism.
School compound -Negros Oriental High School
We summoned the students who were in the campus to gather at the school hall. We managed to get about 200 students to settle down. Our SMCI staff led the students in some action songs before Pastor Mike took over the stage to share the Gospel message in 30 minutes. A handful of students raised their hands to say the sinners’ prayer after the sermon.
Distributing Good News Tracts and gathering students to the hall
The meeting lasted for only 30 minutes because we had to finish off quickly to allow the students to go home. We walked back to SMCI centre feeling a little disappointed by the miscommunication but we were thankful for those who came to listen to the Gospel message.
Pastor Mike sharing the Gospel to few hundred high school students
Students listening to the Gospel messageStudents listening attentively to the Gospel
I was offered a pre-packed cup of fresh coconut juice bought from the stall beside the SMCI centre. I love coconut juice and I thought the Thai coconut was the sweetest and most delicious one I ever tasted. But this pre-packed fresh coconut juices was far sweeter and more refreshing. I could not help but to ask for another cup. I wish some enterprising businessmen would import this into Singapore one day.
Fresh coconut juice
Justin is always reading his bible
I managed to get my laptop to power up using the Acer charger borrowed from Pastor Mike. I felt safer after successfully backing up the video clips into an external hard disk.
Ready on
